


Painted In Forget-Me-Nots

by Funkspiel



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Dragon!Newt, Fluff, M/M, Mentions of Past Torture, Soulmates, creature AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2019-12-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 09:55:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21967426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Funkspiel/pseuds/Funkspiel
Summary: Graves knew he didn't have a soulmate. And with time, he had accepted that. It was probably for the best, after all, given his line of work... It was easy to sacrifice his own happiness with no one to share it with. Easy to throw himself into his work.And then he met Newt Scamander.
Relationships: Original Percival Graves/Newt Scamander
Comments: 18
Kudos: 373





	Painted In Forget-Me-Nots

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Miss_Lv](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_Lv/gifts).



> Secret Santa gift for Miss Lv, who requested soul mates, fluff and creature au. I hope you enjoy it, friend. I'm sorry it gets a little angsty at times -- I don't know why I struggle so much with writing painless fluff! But hopefully the pain makes the fluff all the more beautiful. I hope you enjoy it. Happy Holidays.

If someone had asked him where he saw himself after retirement, he might have chuckled and said something along the lines of ‘ _Graves men and women don’t retire_ ’. OR, if he had had a drink or two to lighten his mood, he might have described some distant idea of what he thought his company might expect to hear. Something like a cabin on a lake or tucked away in a secluded mountain. Or some other thing that would have gotten people nodding and off his back about the whole thing. Because for the longest time, Graves had no inclination of retiring. He had no soulmate, after all. No one to share his life with, no flowers on his skin. And while some people did meet others who weren’t their soulmate and still fell in love just fine, it just… never happened for him. So why not keep working? Why not continue putting his efforts into protecting his country, and his city, and the peace those people enjoyed?

He never would have thought he’d describe his retirement as wearing nothing but pants and lying face down in plush blankets, all collected from around the world and made by hand. Some with intricate patterns and colorful weaves, and others more practical but so warm he could feel it all the way to his bones. He never imagined he’d find himself laying face down on those blankets on some shack floor, lazing contently beside a merrily crackling fire. That hands would be kneading out the last of the damage that Grindelwald had sown into his body, soothing his aches and the shadows of his hurts as though they had never been. He never thought he would call the owner of those hands his partner. That he’d have stayed and travelled with this man – his rescuer – for over a year with no intention of stopping. He’d never have mentioned his morning routine of attending to creatures that would have made him balk simply thinking of the paperwork, were he in New York. Never could have imagined the daily awe that stole over him whenever he saw Newt working with them in the home that the redhead had made by hand.

And never would he have described himself as a treasure in a dragon’s hoard, but here he was, laying beneath the hands of a dragon’s human form. Kneading the pain from his muscles until he was a quivering, useless pile of a man. He could feel whatever oil Newt had slathered over his skin making the fine baby hairs on the back of his neck stand in silly angles, but couldn’t find it in himself to care. His own self image, after all, didn’t bother him so much now that he wasn’t a leader anymore. He hadn’t anticipated how easy it would be to set his suits aside. How much he wouldn’t miss them. How easily he would lay beneath this man’s hands after facing so much cruelty at the hands of another. How good it would feel to let go and trust Newt to catch him.

He hummed as the heel of Newt’s hand rubbed loose a knot from his shoulder, lashes fluttering closed, and couldn’t find it in himself to be embarrassed when Newt chuckled from atop him and said, “Enjoying yourself?”

Graves just hummed again, sleepy and content.

He had never imagined having a life like this. Not him. Not when he didn’t have a soulmate. A thought he must have mused aloud, because Newt’s hands stilled and he asked, “You never thought you would find love?”

Graves opened his eyes, and when it became apparent Newt wouldn’t be resuming, he turned slowly, carefully. Newt raised himself from Graves’ body enough to let him switch to his back. Then lowered himself again, fingers immediately tracing the pearly scars that adored Graves’ belly – so light now, thanks to Newt. Nearly healed.

“No, I didn’t,” Graves said, face soft and amused before the sheer disbelief in Newt’s eyes. “I never had a flower bloom. Not so much as a bud or a petal. I can only assume my soulmate, whoever they might have been, died. And that’s okay. At least they didn’t have to—”

Newt kissed away the words he had been about to say, all too aware of what they were. At least no one had to suffer being coated in blossoms to match his time under Grindelwald’s chain and thumb. He couldn’t imagine what that person would have looked like once he was rescued – likely covered head to toe in flowers. Constantly finding new blooms as they looked for him, all too aware that he was alive and hurting. The flowers would probably be ugly, wilted things, too. Would they have had a scant inch of skin left? What happens when there’s no more room for pain?

Newt kissed him. Kissed him until that spiral of thinking faded away. Hands – warm from oil and from the heat of dragon’s fire that always emanated from Newt’s chest – cradled his jaw. Framed his face. Trembled against his skin as Newt said, fragile and thin, “I’m so sorry, I never intended you to feel as though you were alone.”

Graves stilled. The fire beside them crackled like crickets in the night. It felt painfully slow and sharp and important all at once. And much like how he never knew how much he might enjoy retirement, he didn’t realize how much he desired a soulmate until suddenly, maybe, one might exist.

“Please don’t play with me,” he croaked, surprised by how his throat tightened at the thought. “Not about this.”

Newt pet his face. Brushed back his unruly fringe, eyes watching his face – taking him in like a painting to be remembered.

“You are not alone, Percival Graves,” Newt whispered. “I have waited for you since the moment I saw your name on my egg shell. I have waited for you since your first flower appeared on my scales. I wish I could show you them all, but I rather don’t want to damage you or the shed, and I—I hope this is enough to convince you. I would never joke about this.”

And then, leaning back, Newt pulled down the wide hem of the collar of his baggy white shirt to reveal his breast, the skin fluttering as magic disappeared to reveal a small patch of scales over top his heart. Fiery red and amber scales, like stones that had been dipped in molten gold. Thick plated things that overlapped, and in each intricate spade lie an engraving: flowers. Small blossoms in the dozens. Forget-me-nots, Graves realized; their engravings glimmering delicate lilac and lavender depending on the angle of the light. They were twisted in swirling vines, weaving an intricate pattern across Newt’s scales. Frail, fragile and beautiful. And so many of them. Like little stars.

Graves’ fingers found their way to those marks before he could even consider to ask for permission. He needed to touch them. To feel them with his own hands. His eyes felt hot. He tried to control his voice, but still it trembled.

“Those are mine?”

 _Forget-me-nots. How fitting,_ Grindelwald crooned in his head. A distant echo of a man he thought he had put behind him.

Newt’s hand covered his own, his face a rictus of regret as he brought Graves’ palm to his mouth and kissed it, leaned his face into it, and said, “I’m so sorry. I never considered you wouldn’t see them on my human flesh. They’re specific to my scales. I can’t mimic them with magic onto this form. They’re too—” _Numerous,_ Graves thought. _Ugly, overwhelming—_ “Beautiful.”

It hurt. It couldn’t be possible. It felt too good to be true. For a moment – for the first time in a long time – Graves feared this would all just be a dream. That the shed would disappear, and the fire, and the blankets, and Newt would become a familiar, sneering face with twinkling, mismatched eyes. His heart thundered in his breast and Newt placed his own upon it, anchoring him to the moment.

“I don’t understand,” Graves finally said, thoughts racing. “I don’t… I don’t have any flowers from you.”

He wished that meant Newt had never known pain. That Newt had lived only in happiness. But Newt knew pain. Newt knew anguish. He knew it every time he couldn’t save a creature in time. Every time he said goodbye. Every time the darkness won. Newt knew suffering. And yet only Newt had to bare the weight of Graves’ flowers, and hadn’t shared a single blossom of suffering himself. “I don’t – Nothing ever appeared, I—”

He stopped as Newt put a single finger against his lips – quaking and gentle.

“I am so sorry,” he whispered. “After everything you went through, I wanted to give you time. Give you the chance to ease into this, to choose. This… a bond between a dragon and their soulmate is not like the bond you would have between another man or woman, Percival. It's as much fate as it is a choice… because for dragons, a mate is forever. As immortal as a dragon themself.”

Graves’ eyes widened, slow and growing. Forever. Immortal. The first inklings of what Newt was hinting at began to bleed into his mind, but Newt pressed on.

“You are my soulmate, Percival Graves,” Newt said, voice steadily gaining strength even as the light from the fire illuminated the trembling wetness on his lashes. “And I am so sorry I made you wait so long. I didn’t want to scare you, I didn’t want to put anything else on you that you might not want, especially after…”

Newt’s breath hitched, and Graves knew what he was thinking of; what Grindelwald stole from him. What Newt could never have now.

“That doesn’t mean anything to me,” Newt said quickly, fiercely, as though he could read Graves’ mind. “I would live the rest of my life without touching you even, if I could simply stand beside you, near you, share my days with you. Virginity is a human construct anyway,” he said in typical blunt-Newt fashion, “I care far more about… well, about you. About your happiness. I… could you ever… could you be happy with me, Percival? If it meant…”

Newt trailed off, eyes dipping away shyly even as Graves brought a hand up to draw his attention back to him. Thumb wiping away a searing tear.

“Why don’t I have your flowers, Newt?” Graves asked softly – because even now, watching his soulmate cry, nothing appeared on his skin. It couldn’t possibly be true. Newt had to be wrong. And lord above, Graves hadn’t thought anything could top the pain of realizing and accepting he didn’t have a soulmate until the possibility had been robbed from him again.

“You do,” Newt whispered, “You always have. It’s just… it’s different for dragons, Percival. They come, and they fade, and they bloom again. Because they aren’t like a human’s marks, they aren’t—” he inhaled, throat closing the littlest bit, tears shinning, and he said, “They need heat, for one, to show on a man’s skin,” and he put a hand atop Graves’ belly pointedly, his palm nearly uncomfortable in the depth of its heat.

“And secondly,” Newt smiled wetly, “A dragon only collects the things he loves, that makes him happy. Even in this...” and just when Graves thought the man wouldn’t explain, Newt closed his eyes and said slowly, “I knew I was fated to meet you since the moment I saw your name on my eggshell, Percival, but I knew that _I_ loved you – that I _chose_ to love you – the first moment you finally were healed enough to walk. It was dawn, and when I saw your bed empty I thought you were getting a glass of water, or using the loo. Something mundane, as humans do. But then I walked outside, Percival. And I saw you. And with your first moment free of him, free of any hospital bed or otherwise… you were feeding my mooncalves. No one had asked you. There was a sheen of sweat on your brow, and your hands trembled. But you were smiling. It was obvious that sort of work – caring for others, that is – suited you. Made you happy. And in my wrist, I felt for the first time in a long, long time, a flower bloom in my scales. Small. So small. Delicate and alone, but the first of many in the days that followed. I knew I loved you then. I knew I loved you the moment the mooncalves took to you like you were their mother,” he chuckled, and with every babbling word Graves felt the heat of Newt’s hand against his belly growing and spreading. It drew his attention, even as Newt continued. But the words began to bleed away, the moment captured only by the joyous tone of Newt’s words as he recalled a memory so poignant, so happy. And from it, Graves watched the impossible happen.

From Newt’s happiness, wild flowers began to spread from Newt’s hands. Everywhere his hands rubbed along his stomach, flowers sowed; spreading heat and oil across his skin as the span of his belly became alight with glowing, glimmering amber flowers. They trailed across the hip bone Grindelwald had once shattered and remade and shattered again. They danced until Newt’s fingers and trailed across Graves’ scars and bloomed over his ribs until nearly half the man’s torso was covered in the sheer happiness of Newt’s story. Glimmering flowers, more beautiful and alive and magnificent than Graves had imagined in his lonely nights in bed, pretending what life would be like if he woke to find one little blossom on his skin. So much more beautiful than the ones he had drawn on himself as a child, confused and impatient.

Graves’ hand shook fiercely over Newt’s, breath hard to catch as he leaned up on his elbows to see better. His heart beat a furious staccato into his flesh, so terrified the moment would fade away to nothing but a dream as Newt described, only as a writer like himself could, the moment he chose to love Percival Graves.

Graves leaned forward suddenly, hands in Newt’s red curls as he kissed him. Watched as the patch of scales Newt had revealed doubled with flowers, glittering spectacularly. Wild flowers crawled up Graves’ neck as Newt’s hands trailed up that column of flesh to bury itself into Graves’ hair as well. He had never known he needed happiness until he tasted it. He had never known he could love until he felt it.

He had never known how much he needed a soulmate – needed Newt – until he saw the evidence of it himself.

“I love you,” Graves babbled between kisses. “I love you, I love you, fuck, how I had hoped you existed.”

Newt pulled away. He pressed his forehead to Graves’, chuckled for a moment at the flowers he found blooming at the edges of the man’s hair line and cheeks, and seemed to steel himself for something. And likewise, feeling this change, Graves braced himself as well.

“If you choose this,” Newt said, “If you chose me, you can’t go back.”

“I never planned to go back,” Graves said quickly, surprised. Newt chuckled, a breathy and loving thing.

“No, I mean… You can never be a man again. You can never be mortal again.”

Graves watched him for a long moment. He watched the hope Newt tried to hide, both from Graves and from himself. But between them, Graves began to feel the thrum of something new, something both familiar and completely alien. Like a limb that had been asleep all his life. Newt.

“When you told me you were leaving New York, and you asked if I wanted to tag along,” Graves began, smiling as Newt’s eyes jerked up to him – so big, endless in a way a normal man’s just couldn’t be. Not after how long Newt had lived, how many things Newt had seen. “I didn’t say yes because I needed a vacation. I said yes… because I knew I loved you the moment you took me out into the field, and you let me walk myself even though it took me ages, and it was utterly pigheaded and idiotic. Damn if I didn’t hurt for days after, but you let me. I needed it, and you let me. Waited with me. Never nagged me. I knew I loved you when you sat me down in the grass and you conjured that meteor shower. Anyone else would have scolded me for being stubborn, but you just said, “some views are worth fighting for”, and I knew then I’d go anywhere with you, if you’d let me. I didn’t care what the view was, so long as I got to see it with you.”

“Percival,” Newt whispered, eyes closing, too afraid to hope. “Please.”

“I choose you. I don’t care if I’m a man or a dragon, but I’m nothing without you.”

Newt pushed him back into the blankets, his body a long, hot line against Percival’s as he kissed and touched as though he couldn’t stop for even a moment, lest the man change his mind. And every brush of fingers brought to life new flowers. Every brush of lips bloomed more. There, beside the fire, they painted each other in forget-me-nots and wild flowers.

They loved and they lived and they shared their happiness in flowers. With time, those flowers faded. And like flowers did, they bloomed again with each new moment that brought those two men happiness. Sometimes in small, contented trickles and other times in wild, beautiful bursts.

Never again did Percival live a day of his life without flowers. Not once.


End file.
